Tales From the Warner Archives #7: "The Last Flight" (William Dieterle, 1931)

As I myself get older, I bristle at the phrase "old movies" more and more. My first principle that un vrai film est un vrai film allows no room for what some might call ageist hierarchies. I get shirty even when the issue is raised in a relatively innocuous fashion. I remember going on Anderson Cooper's show on CNN back in 2003 to flog Premiere's "Hottest Sex Scenes" feature, and the very gracious Mr. Cooper mentioned, in a genial tone, that the top five pictures on the list were, and I quote, "relatively older movies." Hardly an unreasonable observation—the films in the top five were Blow-Up, Some Like It Hot, ...And God Created Woman, Vixen, and Last Tango In Paris (and this is what you get when you allow the likes of myself to be the sole arbiter and author of such a list, by the way; none of that Indecent Proposal bullshit for me, no sirree). And I gave him a reasoned, reasonable answer. But I remember thinking, with a little bit of hostility, "What do you mean by older, posh boy? You and Blow-Up are pretty much the same age." I'm like that, what can I tell you. 

 

All this is by way of prefacing the statement of fact that The Last Flight, directed by German emigre Dieterle from an adaptation by John Monk Saunders of his novel Single Woman, is what you might call an inescapably old film. As notable and frank and moving as it is, it does creak rather conspicuously at times, and that's life. And if you can get around—or better still, actually appreciate—that, it's a terrifically noteworthy movie experience. 

 

Flight, based in part on Saunder's own experiences (a World War I aviator, he also wrote Wellman's classic Wings, and won an Oscar for his script for The Dawn Patrol), tells the story of a group of damaged American Great War vets galivanting their way through Paris and Spain, fueled by massive amounts of liquor and all pursuing the same expat lovely, the enigmatic Nikki (a lovely Helen Chandler). Yes, the storyline does sound familiar, and yes, there is a bullfighting scene in here...Yes, Saunders' Single Lady would seem to owe a lot to Papa's The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, but what we're likely looking at here are accounts of near-parallel existences, rather than text theft. 

The ringleader of the black-tie sporting group of heartbroken would-be wolves in this picture is Cary, played by silent film superstar Richard Barthelmess, and again he here puts paid to the too-much perpetrated myth that he couldn't carry a talking picture. The acting styles here are pretty much all on the slightly overemphasizing side of the silent mode, but the performances—Cary's pals are played by a group of the era's stars and future stars, names undreamt of in the Twitterific Kidcrits'™ philosophy, including Johnny Mack Brown and David Manners—are all earnest, unforced. 

 

One aspect of the film that's rather bracingly prominent is its treatment of what I believe was not quite yet known as alcoholism. "What should I drink now, I suppose?" is a constant refrain with these characters, and they're all pretty explicit about the fact that they're looking for strong mood uplifters. Nikki is constantly wondering what such and such a cocktail is going to do for her. "It'll make you bark like a fox," Cary advises at one point. "But I don't want to bark like a fox." "It'll make you laugh and play." Yes—laugh and play is what these characters all want to do, and they think the drink is gonna help, and it never, ever does. Looking at one of Cary's crew, miserable in his cups, Nikki asks Cary what's going to finally help the guy get better. "He'll have to be...reborn," Cary says ruefully. It's a striking line, especially so when one puts together that this film was made about five years before the official founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, a recovery group that posits a "spiritual awakening"  as key to a program of sobriety. Kind of in the same ballpark as a rebirth, I'd say. But such an option seems definitively out of most of these characters' reaches, and Nikki and Cary end up together more or less via attrition—all of Cary's comrades go by the wayside, victims of their war trauma and their powerlessness over alcohol. (And Saunders himself took his own life in 1940.)

 

One of those companions, Francis, seen above with the gun, is played by Elliott Nugent, who went on to become a very accomplished and celebrated playwright and director (he helmed the Bob Hope version of The Cat and the Canary, which I get all excited about here). Nugent also went on to have his own harrowing experiences with drinking and depression, which he recounts with admirable courage in his 1965 memoir Events Leading Up To The Comedy. Among the most heartbreaking bits in the account is his telling of the last days of his friend, the great James Thurber (with whom Nugent collaborated on the play The Male Animal), and what Thurber turned into as he "began his daily five-o-clock drinking." "He began to work on a bitter autobiography to be called What Happened To Me. [...] 'This will be the real truth, for the first time,' he told me. 'I can't hide any more behind the mask of comedy that I've used all my life. People are not funny; they are vicious and horrible—and so is life!'"

As for Nugent himself, he ends Events thusly: "I am learning to try to forgive myself, so much as is within my power. Pray for me, dear grandchildren—and for all good people of whatever religion who live in this lovely and often frightening world; God knows we need such petitions."

Comments

[Vadim]

"As notable and frank and moving as it is, it does creak rather conspicuously at times, and that's life."

I really hate to say this, but I think we've both been spending a little too much time at Jeff Wells' place. This scans a little like him at the end.

[Ben Sachs]

I haven't seen this (And alas--it sounds great!), but the qualities you mention--WWI detail and early seriousness regarding addiction--bring to mind Wellman's "Heroes for Sale."

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Vadim: Ouch. Just, ouch.

@ Ben: The affinities are definitely there. "Heroes" is certainly a more fluid film, narratively and visually. Still, the two pictures would make and apt, if not entirely uplifting, double feature.

[david hare]

Saunders was also the author of Leisen's terrific Eagle and the Hawk (although the director credit goes to Stuart Walker, but Leisen is certifiably the true director) - this came out in the recent Cary Grant Universal/TCM Box.

Fredric March made a partial career playing drunks but in this he goes right to the edge in an 80 minute crescendo and the buildup is electrifying. I wont wreck the viewing for anyone with a "spoiler" but Grant ends up saving his honor after March has a total meltdown with his fellow WWI officers about the hideous futility of war.

[The Siren]

I encounter this semantics problem all the time. I don't want to run anybody off by implying that a movie is an antique, but if the movies I write about aren't old, what are they? Calling something like Devotion a "classic movie" seems like those theater junkets that offer discount tickets to the "young at heart." Your point is very, very well taken, but there's a certain truth-in-advertising ring to the phrase old movies, and I've never had a problem with that. It's like Lena Horne cheerfully calling herself an old broad, secure in the knowledge that she looked better well past 70 than most women did at age 25. "OldER movie," however, grates. Older than what, my mother? I do wish you'd actually compared Blow-Up to Cooper's birthday, if only to hear you describe the look on his face.

Anyway. The Last Flight--Helen Chandler, who had irritated me to death in other movies, was a revelation in this one, whether she's standing there with a set of dentures in a glass or asking somebody to scrub her back. (What the hell happened? Actresses usually get less wooden, not more.) I was fascinated with the essentially chaste nature of the men's alliance with Chandler, alcohol (and eventually death) playing the role that sex and even romance might have otherwise. And the atmosphere--this movie, of all the ones about the Lost Generation, made me feel a bit of what it might have been like to be drinking your way through Europe after postwar economic chaos turned it into a rummage sale.

Also, huge second for David Hare's recommendation of The Eagle and the Hawk, which like Heroes for Sale would make a perfect double bill with Last Flight, if someone hasn't done that already. Actually, given these films' short running times, a triple feature would be just fine too.

[Lou Lumenick]

This is one of my favorite early talkies. Saunders wrote the part of Nikki for his then-wife, Fay Wray, who was unavailable. But a few months after the movie came out, she played the part in a short-lived, hard-to-imagine Broadway musical adaptation called "Nikki'' by Saunders. Her leading man, playing Cary, had just been signed by Paramount and they didn't like his given name, Archie Leach. So Fay suggested he use the character's name, Cary Lockwood. The studio liked Cary fine, but thought Lockwood was too long for a marquee and came up with a shorter alternative.

[Paul Duane]

So glad to hear this movie is finally available. It's one of my very favourite 'lost' movies for all the reasons the Siren names above. Its humour is so very very dry and deadpan, and the heartbreak lurking below the humour all the more affecting for being underplayed. David Cairns has written a terrific appreciation here: http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/spent-bullets/